,
and after finding the impression too notoriously infamous,
attempts to qualify it, sycophantic parenthesis.

The names of Franklin and Priestley will be enrolled in the
catalogue of worthies, while the wretched Peter Porcupine, and
his more wretched supporters, will sink into oblivion, unless the
register of Newgate should be published, and their memories be
raked from the loathsome rubbish as spectres of universal
destestation.

And the London Monthly Review (August 10, 1796) commented as follows on
Porcupine's animadversions upon Priestley:

Frequently as we have differed in opinion from Dr. Priestley, we
should think it an act of injustice to his merit, not to say that
the numerous and important services which he has rendered to
science, and the unequivocal proofs which he has given of at least
honest intention towards religion and Christianity ought to have
protected him from such gross insults as are poured upon him in
this pamphlet. Of the author's literary talent, we shall say but
little: the phrases, "setting down to count the cost"--"the rights
of the man the greatest bore in nature"--the appellation of
rigmarole ramble, given to a correct sentence of Dr.
Priestley--which the author attempts to criticise--may serve as
specimens of his language.

The pitiful attempt at wit, in his vulgar fable of the pitcher
haranguing the pans and jordans, will give him little credit as a
writer, with readers of an elegant taste.--No censure, however,
can be too severe for a writer who suffers the rancour of party
spirit to carry him so far beyond the bounds of justice, truth and
decency, as to speak of Dr. Priestley as an admirer of the
massacres of France, and who would have wished to have seen the
town of Birmingham like that of Lyons, razed, and all its
industrious and loyal inhabitants butchered as a man whose conduct
proves that he has either an understanding little superior to that
of an idiot, or the heart of Marat: in short, as a man who fled
into banishment covered with the universal destestation of his
countrymen. The spirit, which could dictate such outrageous abuse,
must disgrace any individual and any party.

Even before Porcupine began his abuse of Priestley, there appeared
efforts intended no doubt to arouse o